Conventionally, there has been proposed a card connector which includes a housing, contact terminals, a contact spring piece, and a fixing piece (see Patent Literature 1).
The housing includes a pair of side walls, an abutment wall which is orthogonal to the pair of side walls and connects the side walls to each other, and a lower board which is connected to the side walls and a bottom of the abutment wall.
Inner surfaces of the side walls are formed with guiding grooves, respectively, and the guiding grooves guide an IC card in an inserting/removing direction and support the same.
A plurality of grooves are formed in the lower board of the housing at equally-spaced intervals. The plurality of grooves extend in the direction of inserting/removing the IC card.
The contact terminals include a contact terminal for power supply and contact terminals for signals. The contact terminals are press-fitted in the grooves in the lower board and are held therein.
The contact spring piece is substantially U-shaped in plan view, and is accommodated in an accommodating space formed in the abutment wall of the housing. The contact spring piece has one end formed with a fixing portion which is fixed to the abutment wall, and the other end formed with an abutment portion which is brought into abutment with a front end surface of the IC card. The abutment portion can be displaced along the direction of inserting/removing the IC card.
The fixing piece has one end formed with a fixing portion which is fixed to one of the side walls, and the other end formed with a contact piece.
The contact spring piece and the fixing piece form a switch for recognizing whether or not the card connector is loaded with the IC card.
When the IC card is inserted into the housing, the IC card is guided to the abutment wall by the guiding grooves in the pair of side walls.
At this time, the abutment portion of the contact spring piece is pressed backward by the front end surface of the IC card, and is brought into contact with the contact piece of the fixing piece. As a result, the switch is closed, whereby it is possible to detect that the card connector is loaded with the IC card.
Patent Literature 1: Japanese Laid-Open Patent Publication (Kokai) No. 2001-143788 (see paragraphs 0021 to 0029, FIGS. 2 and 4)